Not really, aside from bull**** about trying to remain productive, which anybody who thinks about it a bit knows that a 12hr shift is terrible for productivity. Sure, we have a production line that has to keep running, but if there's a problem I can't go over there and fix it and physical meetings are banned, so there's really no difference. Our VP of engineering is still fighting the group president trying to let us stay home. That half of my coworkers are now opposite of me slows everything down, but that was what they came up with to keep people in the office.

Applied to go back to the SBA Disaster Assistance team, which I worked for after Hurricane Sandy. They're not taking remote workers right now, and I can't move back to Texas, but we'll see what tune they're playing a month from now when they've received an application from every small business in America.

Just read that prisoners with little time left or only small crimes are being released. It's supposed to be only temporary, meaning that they'll have to go back as soon as this is all over. But they are encouraged to treat this as parole so that they don't have to go back. Prisons are also encouraged to write positively about the released prisoners to the judges who will then decide whether it could be treated as parole officially.

This US has consistently seen a much lower death to case ratio than most of Europe, and I have yet to see a good explanation for why.

I think if the US sees less than a quarter million deaths, that counts as a win. For a pandemic this rare that we weren't really prepared for, five time more deaths than a bad flu season really wouldn't be too bad in the grand scheme of things.

This US has consistently seen a much lower death to case ratio than most of Europe, and I have yet to see a good explanation for why.

I think if the US sees less than a quarter million deaths, that counts as a win. For a pandemic this rare that we weren't really prepared for, five time more deaths than a bad flu season really wouldn't be too bad in the grand scheme of things.

I don't think we should give the President the benefit of pretending that six-figure deaths are a good outcome.

Imagine if our leaders used the advance knowledge to bolster supplies and convince manufacturers to retool early instead of speculating on the stock market?

Well hindsight is 20/20 but at least those manufacturers spent wisely and now have savings and good looking balance sheets, so it shouldn’t be hard for them to raise capital.

A ****hole like China would probably need the government to order their manufacturers to make essential things. The government would probably have to pay for it all too, and pay even more money just to keep the companies running in the long term. Can you imagine living in a country like that?